Not to be left out of the rush to integrate generative AI into search, on Wednesday DuckDuckGo announced DuckAssist, an AI-powered factual summary service powered by technology from Anthropic and OpenAI. It is available for free today as a wide beta test for users of DuckDuckGo's browser extensions and browsing apps. Being powered by an AI model, the company admits that DuckAssist might make stuff up but hopes it will happen rarely.
Here's how it works: If a DuckDuckGo user searches a question that can be answered by Wikipedia, DuckAssist may appear and use AI natural language technology to generate a brief summary of what it finds in Wikipedia, with source links listed below. The summary appears above DuckDuckGo's regular search results in a special box.
[...] Update (March 9, 2023): We spoke with a representative of DuckDuckGo and they said they're using OpenAI's GPT-3.5 and Anthropic's Claude as LLMs. "We're experimenting with OpenAI's recently announced Turbo model, too," they said.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Sunday March 12 2023, @08:53PM (1 child)
Just a couple days ago people were commenting about the "big snowflakes" in Iowa. I recalled that my Dad always called them "goose feathers". I was wondering about the origin of that--whether it was a regionalism or not. Try as I might, I couldn't find an easy way to build that kind of query and avoid all the hits that were about literal geese and feathers, or snow geese. It totally ignored "goose feathers" in quotes, and it wasn't even trying to shove ads that much. It just sucked. In the old days it seems like I might have come across some essay by an English professor explaining the fascinating etymology of the expression and/or the regions in which it's used. Or for that matter, a confirmation from a meteorologist of my suspicion that such snow indicates you're near the rain-snow boundary. For all I know that kind of content is still out there, stranded beyond the reach of our currently dumbed-down search.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13 2023, @07:07AM
"goose feathers" "slang" "snowflakes"
produces this: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/snowing [thefreedictionary.com]
which has this phrase: "heavy flakes like goose feathers"
https://books.google.com.my/books?id=X4tY-WEiNmwC&pg=PT889&lpg=PT889&dq=%22heavy+flakes+like+goose+feathers%22&source=bl&ots=HEMDlNx9pF&sig=ACfU3U3q9c3EhUM3jIDTQSiPPON4-07GpQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjI7fKCq9j9AhVa1nMBHcaeDscQ6AF6BAgFEAM#v=onepage&q=%22heavy%20flakes%20like%20goose%20feathers%22&f=false [google.com.my]
See also: https://www.omgchinese.com/dictionary/chinese/%E9%B9%85%E6%AF%9B%E5%A4%A7%E9%9B%AA [omgchinese.com]
鹅毛大雪 = goose feather big snow
So I guess your dad is probably not the only one...
This was via google. Bing and ddg were worse.